Lost Causes
by the laws of transitivity
Summary: Toad thought that he could put his torturous childhood behind him, but someone appears from his past and brings it all screaming back.
1. Prologue

**Title: **Lost Causes

**Author: **the laws of transitivity

**Rating:** PG-13 (For now, at least)

**Summary:** Toad thought that he could put his torturous childhood behind him, but someone appears from his past and brings it all screaming back.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the X-Men.

**Please Read and Review.**

Prologue 

York, England 1982

They brought him down here almost a year ago. Another boy. Another freak. They said this one looked more like the Devil than I did. He was still young. They kept him upstairs with the rest of the kids until he could walk and talk, just as they'd done with me. Now he was chained to the wall across from the one I was chained to. It's always pretty dark in the basement, but his eyes caught and reflected the small bit of light that filtered in through the grimy windows so it appeared that they were glowing. It was a bit demonic.

The priest calls him Child Lucifer. His skin was completely black, so he blended in with the wall behind him in the dark room. Clothed in hand-me-downs from the sixties, it was easy to see how that leather-like skin clung to his bones, displaying ribs, hips, and collar bone. He did not have eye whites, irises, or pupils. The eyes were just red- bright, glowing red.

I suppose it's some odd sort of kindness they show him: starting out easy. It was a while ago, but I suppose they did the same for me. When they come down, they'll belt him around a little, give a good grope or two, then come for me next. I get the real shit end of it. At best, they'll kick the shit out of me, tell me that I'm a disgusting toad of a boy, that the Devil has a special place in hell for demons like me. At worst… well, I try not to think about 'at worst'. They've raped me for more hours than I can count.

Sometimes, Sister Doreen will sneak down to us. She's always been good to me, and she extends the same affection toward this new boy that she calls Michael. If she bandaged us up at all, they'd notice, and she couldn't come down anymore, but she'll bring us food sometimes and tell us stories. When we're well enough, she makes us walk around in the small space that the chains provide so our legs don't forget how. The kind old nun has been teaching me how to read from the Bible. She says that Michael is too young to learn just yet, but that when he's five or six like me, she'll teach him, too.

Last week, when she came to see us, she brought each of us a small figurine of a woman, a nun. She told us that her name was Saint Rita of Cascia. Saint Rita is the patron saint of lost causes and abused children. Which reason she was giving us the figurines for, she did not say.

Last night, Michael was crying again. He does that a lot, but I don't think it's just because he's hurt. "Michael," I sighed, "Keep it down or they'll hear you." Then they'd come downstairs and yell at us.

"I w-w-want t'go out," he sobbed from across the room. The ruby glow of his eyes was blurred with tears.

"You can't go out," I muttered, "You live here."

There was a pause while he tried to pull himself together, to stop crying. He sniffled, then said very quietly, "Mort?" That's my real name. No one but Michael or Sister Doreen calls me that.

"Yeah, Michael?"

"D'you think I'm a demon?" His voice was shaky, threatening to weep again.

I thought about it. Only one person had ever told the two of us that we weren't, but she was the only person that was any good to us. "I don' think so," I decided.

The next night, something weird happened to me. It was like a tingle, energy rushing through my limbs, my freakish tongue. They'd beaten me pretty badly that night, but suddenly I felt myself coursing with an almost frustrated need to _move._ My legs kicked out furiously, the left one connecting with one of the chains that attached my arm to the wall. It wrenched at my wrist hard and made the metal groan where it connected to the wall. I stopped, looking down at the offending leg. I didn't know I could kick that hard. I tried again, aiming the kick closer to the wall. The metal connector wrenched loudly in the brick and came part of the way out. Michael's red eyes were open and glowing across the room, watching me intently as I gave another kick and dislodged it. I did the same with the other and leapt to my feet. I was free.

"Come get me!" he hissed pleadingly, "Mort, come get me!"

But the noises had attracted unwanted attention from upstairs. I could hear them coming, and I knew that they'd beat me if they found out I tried to escape. They'd chain me back down and beat me. I looked at Michael, then at the stairs where I knew they would be any minute.

With one leap, I was at the window. With one kick, I broke it open. Without a second thought, I left the younger boy behind me and ran toward freedom.


	2. The Stalking

**Title: **Lost Causes

**Author: **the laws of transitivity

**Rating:** PG-13 (For now, at least)

**Summary:** Toad thought that he could put his torturous childhood behind him, but someone appears from his past and brings it all screaming back.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the X-Men.

**Please Read and Review.**

Chapter One

Present day Manhattan

"It's Toad," he barked, "Sabertooth, wake up! Over!"

A moment later, a gruff, sleepy, yet concerned voice crackled over the Com unit. "I'm here. What's the problem? Is there activity?"

Toad sat back in his seat and picked at the dirt under his fingernails. "Nope. Jus' turned off th'telly an' now he's going to sleep. Over."

With a groan of irritation, Sabe snapped at him, "Runt, when was the last time one of these Com units failed?"

"Uh… never? Why? Over."

"Because they all work two-ways so why d'you bother with all that 'copy' 'over' shit?"

He paused, trying to come up with a good reason for it. The real reason, of course, was that it sounded cool. "I's jus'… a habit. From th' old radios," he told him.

Sabertooth snorted. "Yeah, well, you sound like a five-year-old playing cop, so shut it."

Glad that the oversized cat wasn't there to see him blushing, Toad sank down in his seat. "Look, Vic, this guy hasn' done anythin' interesting in three days. Why're we still doing surveillance on him?"

"Because you fucked up at Liberty," his friend explained easily, "You're lucky you didn't get sacked altogether, but now you've got the shit job. Deal with it."

"Yeh, well, he's down for th'night, so I'm goin' back to the apartment an' sleepin' in a bed for a change," Toad grumbled back.

"If anything happens, it's your ass."

With that statement of approval, Toad put down the Com unit and put the truck into drive. He was staying in a shitty corner of town. It was mutant friendly and therefore poor as dirt. Magneto had apartments and safe houses rented out under various aliases throughout the city. This was probably one of the worse ones.

He forgot all about that when he got to the front door, though. His jaw dropped along with the keys that fell next to his feet. There was a large, dripping frog stuck to his door with a knife through its middle. The sight of it didn't bother him. Gore was no big deal for an assassin, but that meant someone knew he was there. That meant no sleeping there. He retreated back to the truck immediately and got into the truck.

"I'm blown," he barked into the Com unit.

Sabertooth sounded sleepy again. "Already? Jesus that was fast."

"Not tha' kind of blown, moron," Toad snapped, "If it was tha' kind of blown, I'd sound happy. Do I sound happy to you?!" He didn't sound happy.

"Okay, what are you talking about?" the cat demanded.

He took a deep breath as he took off toward a motel. "There was a frog. Stabbed t'my door."

There was a pause on the other end. "So someone knows you're staying there," he summarized slowly, "So you have to get out."

"Thank you, genius boy," he muttered, "I'm stayin' in a motel tonight. Tell th'boss there's a leak." There was no response, so for good measure, he added, "Over and out."

The next day went business as usual during surveillance. The subject went to work, picked his nose, watched CSPAN, and went to sleep.

However, when Mort returned to the motel, there was another surprise waiting for him. It was a small figurine of a nun that he recognized at once. Rita of Casca: Patron saint of lost causes and abused children. Her small head lay on the ground next to her upright body in front of his room. Who would know that? He didn't talk to anybody about his stay in the orphanage.

He moved to another safe house that was a bit out of his way.

The next night, he came home to something a bit more straightforward. In the front stoop, sunk into the concrete as if it had been written in the day it was poured, were the words, 'I'M GOING TO KILL YOU, MORT'. He was starting to panic now.

Mort swore loudly and backed away from the stoop, glancing around wildly for the threat. Nobody used his real name. Nobody knew about the saint. No one. He'd gone so pale, he might have passed for a normal human in a dark room. "Shit," he muttered, hurrying back to his truck, "Shit, shit, shit…" He got in, slammed the door behind him, and sat there, staring straight ahead.

After a moment, he jerked the truck into gear and started off down the street. There was nothing for it but to find another motel- far away. Maybe he'd drive to Brooklyn. It might throw whoever was tailing him off for a few days.

Little did he know, the stowaway in the bed of the pickup was laying comfortably, ready to go wherever he planned to.


	3. A Ghost

**Title: **Lost Causes

**Author: **the laws of transitivity

**Rating:** PG-13 (For now, at least)

**Summary:** Toad thought that he could put his torturous childhood behind him, but someone appears from his past and brings it all screaming back.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the X-Men.

**Please Read and Review.**

Chapter Two

Present day Manhattan

Tonight was the night and all Michael had to do for the next few hours was to lay in the bed of the pick-up truck and think. About what? Well, the only thing he ever did think about.

(York, England)

He watched Mort go, leave him. The priest came running down the stairs, and upon seeing that the oldest demon had run off, he hurried back upstairs. He could hear them outside, searching, but after an hour, they gave up. And he knew that someone would come down for him.

The priest was seething mad. He walked right over to the fearful toddler and backhanded him across the face. The child fell backwards, crying out in pain. The old man certainly didn't stop there, though. It was the first time Michael had ever been raped, but it wouldn't be the last by a long shot. They were done going easy.

The next eight years were a haze of pain, humiliation, fear, and a mounting hate for the one person he blamed most for what happened to him. Mortimer. It may have been irrational, but in his mind, Mort was the one person that could have ended his suffering, and he chose not to. He left him to die in that Godforsaken basement. While one of the older boys would be trying out his new knife on Michael, he would drift away from the pain, and see his face as it was that night: Golden eyes glinting in the dark, only a hint of hesitation before he took off. He dreamed of the day that he'd be free to find him and kill him…

It was spring and he was eleven years old when things changed. The priest was down in the basement, hissing obscenities at him and telling him what filth he was. He'd never noticed the brick before- the one that jutted out of the wall. His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Wha's tha'?" he demanded.

The boy trembled slightly, but responded, "A brick, Father."

He was slapped, then the man moved to jerk the brick out of the wall, revealing the saintly figuring behind it. "Who gave this t'you!?" he roared. The child shrank back in fear, but did not respond. "WHO GAVE YOU THIS RUDDY STATUE?!" His hand raised up and he threw the saint's figurine at Michael, striking him in the side of the head. She fell to the floor, her head falling off as it did. He grabbed it up, holding back tears. "Doreen," the priest said slowly in realization, "It was her, wasn't it?" The boy didn't respond.

Michael stared after the priest's retreating figure, coddling the wax Saint Rita of Casca in his hands. As the fear fell away, anger boiled up and he felt something rushing through him: Heat, power, energy. The shackles felt strange around his wrists. Looking down, he saw that they were… melting. First they went white hot, then they dripped down, scalding away spots on his pants, but not burning his skin. It felt hot, but didn't hurt in the least.

Maybe his head had been hit harder than he thought. Maybe he was hallucinating all of this. Or maybe he was free. Deciding to err on the side of freedom, the boy sprang to his feet, a wild fear and power running through his veins. The brick in the walls of the basements were melting. He ran for the window frantically, still clutching the statue to his chest. The window frame was white hot and melting, dropping the glass to shatter on the sloppy and lava-like concrete floor. He didn't care that it cut his feet when he ran over it. The only thing he cared about was getting out that window. He fell onto the grass outside, looking up at the building. The entire thing was sinking on its foundation, lopsided.

Vaguely, Michael knew he could stop it if he wanted. The thing was that he didn't. He wanted them to pay, to suffer. He sped up the melting, pouring his energy into liquefying the entire orphanage. By the end, he was whimpering in pain and exhaustion, but he'd finished it. That was what mattered. There was only one person left in the world to get back at.

(Manhattan, NY)

When he was young, his skin had been, while ashen and strange looking, smooth and soft to the touch. With years of abuse, though, it had become creased with scars that puckered out like hundreds of little and big seams- as if, were he to wear his skin right-side-out, they would be barely noticeable. His black hair was cut short, unlike the shaggy mess it had been when he was younger. He was sixteen now. His eyes hadn't changed a bit.

Glancing down at his wristwatch, Michael grinned to himself. It was time. Pushing back the tarp he'd been hiding himself in, he slipped out of the truck and stalked toward the motel. It really was a power trip- scaring the great Toad. He didn't care about the illegal activity, the mutant activism, any of it. All he knew was that if Mort really cared about mutants, he wouldn't be in the habit of ruining their lives.

The idiot was asleep in bed, a gun tucked conspicuously under the edge of his pillow. The stalker walked straight to the door of his room and placed a hand over the crease where the door met the wall beside the knob. Concentrating on heat, on the metal he knew was just a short ways in from his hand, he melted the bolt, and the door swung open with a mere tap.

First order of business: disarm him. The gun must have shifted further out from under the pillow while Mort was sleeping, so it wouldn't be too hard to grab. Michael went around to the opposite side of the bed and reached forward to get it…

"Please." It was mumbled by the sleeping mutant, quiet, but quite clear. "Please I'll be quiet." This full-grown man was whimpering.

Nightmares were hardly a foreign concept to the younger man. He still dreamed about the days at the orphanage, woke up screaming and in a cold sweat. Freezing as he watched the familiar expression, heard the words he still remembered so clearly from that first year in the basement.

There was a choking as if to hold back tears. "God, don' hurt me. Please don'…"

His hand was around the gun now, but his attention still on the face that had certainly aged since thirteen years previous. Mort still looked young, though, when he was like this.

He recalled the words he'd heard shrieked at Mort years ago: "You worthless, disgusting scum! You make me sick! You're nothing but a disgusting little toad boy! Stop crying, freak!"

Michael realized too late that he was reaching out to touch his face, to comfort him. The golden eyes snapped open to meet his red ones. "Oh, God, it's you," Mort gasped. He knew those eyes instantly.

Suddenly feeling very young, very weak, very in over his head, the boy grabbed the gun and took a step backward, aiming it at the other mutant's head.

"You came all this way to kill me?" he asked, amazed. It was like seeing a ghost.

The metal that held in the window behind him was melting slowly as he tried to get his hands to stop shaking around the gun. "You ruined my life," Michael accused in a raspy voice.

The older man stood up slowly, only in boxer shorts. There scars across his chest as well. "No, Michael. I didn' ruin it. I jus' didn' save it."

"I hate you!" was all he could think to shout. Every nerve in his body was screaming for him to run, to get out. Finish him later. So when the window dropped, scattering glass across the balcony of the motel, Michael took two large steps back and turned quickly to leap out through the escape he'd made.


End file.
